What Should You Know About the Google’s Page Experience Update and How Can You Prepare?

Article Updated On 13 February 2022

Google updates its algorithm constantly. There are daily changes made to the algorithm that most people have no idea about.

But from time to time, there are some big updates that have the potential of having massive effects over the ranks in search engine result pages. And the page experience update is one of these types of updates.

It is essential for every webmaster to have at least some basic ideas about the changes made to the algorithms of Google and other search engines.

Why? To avoid any unpleasant surprises and understand if they need to make changes and what exactly they have to do.

In the last years, all the big updates made by Google follow the trend of increasing the importance of the user experience. And that includes the announced page experience update.

The biggest concern that online business owners that use SEO as a marketing method have is how will their site be affected? Well, the answer is it depends. If you have an online business and your SEO efforts paid enough attention to the user experience that your website provides, then you will not be affected negatively.

Your website may even see significant improvements. But the same principle applies if your SEO efforts didn’t take the user experiencing the consideration. And you may need the help of a bespoke SEO company.

1. How Will the Search Results Be Affected by the Google Page Experience Update?

Below you can find some useful information about the possible effects that the update could have on your website. You could also use a Google rank checker to see the effects on your ranks.

• Mobile. As seen in the past years, more and more people choose to use their mobile devices on Google. More than half of the searches made are from smartphones and other mobile devices. As a result of this increase, Google updated its algorithm accordingly. Giving more and more importance to the page experience of the mobile users. And with this update, the trend will continue. And if your website is not optimized for mobile devices, then your ranks will be penalized accordingly.

• Desktop. The user experience is already an extremely important part of SEO. And if any factors do not meet the requirements, then your website will be dragged down in the search results. The loading speed of the website is the biggest factor. And with the announced update, its importance will rise even more. Also, there will be new factors introduced, and the already implemented ones will be refined.

• Schedule. The update will be implemented between June and August 2021. So, you still have time to optimize your website or collaborate with a reliable SEO agency that can help you do it. Also, keep in mind that Google makes hundreds of updates every year. But most of them are small and have very limited effects on the ranks. So, after the big update, there will be many others that will optimize the changes based on the results brought by the update.

2. Is the Google Page Experience Update More Important Than Other Ranking Signals?

The first thing that you must know about SEO is the fact that it’s a very large and complex field. There are hundreds of factors that Google’s algorithm takes into consideration to decide the ranks of a website. And although some of the factors are more important than others, all of them have a certain level of importance. As a result, you should never focus on a single part of SEO. Make sure that the technical and off-site SEO parts are taken care of as well.

The best method is to cover all the SEO needs of your website. The exact changes that the Google page experience update will make are not known. So, it is impossible to say exactly how important the factors will be in deciding the ranks of a website. But you should still learn the know information about them to prepare for every scenario that may happen:

Top 3 Factors introduced In the New Update

It is estimated that new online businesses should pay more attention than everyone else to these factors.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). This factor has the purpose of measuring the loading speed of the largest element on a page. The measurement takes place when the page start loading. So, it measures how much will your website’s visitors have to wait for each page to load. The recommended loading period mentioned in the announcement is 2.5 seconds. If the period is larger than that, then you should optimize your website accordingly.

• First input delay (FID). The purpose of this factor is to measure the response of the interaction between the user and the website. For example, the time between the press of a button and the response of the website. The recommended period is 0.1 seconds or 100 milliseconds. And if the response is bigger than 0.3 seconds, then the response is deemed poss.

• Cumulative layout shifts (CLS). As the name implies, this factor takes into consideration the overall visual changes of the page. A good example of this factor is a pop-up that you may have on your website. What is different about this factor is that there is no unit for the score. But it can be calculated, and 0.1 is the standard of a good score.

Keep in mind that even if you start focusing on these factors, it will take time to see results.

3. How Will Your Website Be Affected by the Google Page Experience Update and How Should You Prepare?

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, your website will surely be affected by the Google page experience update. But the effects depend on the SEO efforts that were done in the past. If you are not sure about the SEO state of your website, you should follow the advice mentioned below. By doing that, you can make sure that your website and business do not suffer any losses for the upcoming Google update.

• Find a reliable SEO agency. The first thing you should do is find a reliable SEO agency. There are many options on the market. So, you must do thorough research before you make a decision. And unlike the past, there are some additional factors that you should check while researching an agency.

How Can an SEO Agency Help Your Website’s Situation?

• Check if the agency understands the importance of user experience. Besides the standard research, you also need to make sure that the SEO agency understands the importance of user experience and understands the trend that Google imposed in SEO. You should avoid any agency that ignores the users and focuses solely on other factors that will only increase the ranks. Even more so if they ignore updates such as the Penguin update and this one.

• Make sure the agency is prepared for the update. You should also make sure that the agency is prepared for the update. And there are 2 methods that you can use to check both factors. The first one is to directly contact the agency and get the information directly from them. And the second alternative is to check its website and see if there are any articles or information about user experience and the upcoming Google update.

About the Author

Mihai C. Tudorache

I am responsible for data analysis of the completed projects to identify the main factors which contribute to the Google ranking improvement process. Together with my brother skills and my detailed analysis, we can assure all our customers that our services are bulletproof and that you will always get the desired results.